Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  “Excellent,” says the Tailor, “You’re a natural, Miss Colburn.”

  She gives me this How about that! look over her shoulder and I shake my head at her, looking her up and down and feeling the pinch in my cheeks. I run my palm over my mouth. Christ. Bonnie and Clyde really were amateurs. This girl can work it.

  The Tailor types a few things into his computer and says, “I can have these suits hemmed for you by tomorrow morning.”

  Lucy huffs. She’s got a Hollywood sense of getaway timing, apparently. But these things don’t just happen. “That’ll be fine,” I say. “See you at 9.”

  “That’ll be $15 up front,” the Tailor says.

  I take Lucy’s purse from her shoulder and pull out the cash from the lining. Next thing on the agenda, we gotta lose this purse, I think to myself. It’s filthy, costs a fortune, and doesn’t look anything like her anymore.

  I peel off fifteen-hundred. He counts it, licking his thumb to make sure he’s not getting short changed. Then he stacks the bills in a neat little pile and nods.

  He sits down, cleans his round glasses with a special cloth on his desk, and gets to work. I lead her out of the back room by the hand. As we’re passing through the dry-cleaning bags, she says, “What are we going to do until tomorrow?’

  I yank her to me by the ass. Her body collides with mine, and I feel the little buttons on her shirt press into my chest. She’s got a mink behind her. I slip one hand up the back of her neck and say, “I think we can figure out a way to pass the time.”

  Her hands grip my body, and I sink into the kiss. I press the sides of my thumbs to her cheeks, drawing her up on her tiptoes. She takes a long inhale like she’s about to dive underwater. Her eyes slide shut, and I press her to the furs and dry-cleaning bags.

  That’s when we hear the Tailor, from the back room, saying, “This is a family-friendly business, you two. See you tomorrow.”

  We get a room at a motel on Central—two floors, cinderblock, bubble-gum pink—called the Drive Inn.

  “The Drive Inn. Punny,” says Lucy, gathering up her stuff as I park near our room.

  But as we head down the sidewalk, I hear footsteps behind us. I put my hand to my knife in my pocket and turn around. Cool, calm, ready to strike.

  But it’s the manager who checked us in.

  His nametag says Brad. Gringo, short, pudgy. Nice enough, provided he doesn’t start poking his nose into our business.

  He approaches me, not Lucy, and in a low man-to-man voice he says, “Sir, I forgot to say, I think there’s a problem with the cable in your room.”

  “No big deal,” I say, about to keep going. Does this guy have eyes? Does he fucking think I’m going to be alone in a room with Lucy and watch television? “Not going to be an issue.”

  “I mean, sir, that the premium channels,” he pauses there to wiggle his eyebrows, “are permanently turned on. Management is working on it. But I’m obliged to inform you, in case you have anybody underage in your party.”

  Turning over my shoulder, I see Lucy leaning down and fixing something on the heel of her boots. The curve of her hips, the bend of her knee, the soft white flesh on the back of her thigh. “Premium as in…”

  “Porn, yes sir,” he says, in just a whisper. “So, I hope that doesn’t offend you.”

  Lucy stands back up, and her bra strap slides down. She doesn’t fix it. Instead she just looks straight at me. She hasn’t heard him.

  I want her naked and gasping and telling me all the dirty, filthy fantasies she doesn’t even know she has.

  “Don’t worry, man,” I say. “The premium channels will be just fine.”

  28

  I’m in the bathroom peeing when I hear his fly come down. I stop mid-stream to listen. I hear the noises of his clothes coming off.

  “What’s going on in there?” he asks in that sexy-as-hell voice of his.

  “That’s what I was going to ask you,” I say. I grab a handful of toilet paper and flush. When I come out, he’s sitting on the bed, with his back to the headboard. He’s got his legs spread and all the covers—comforter, top sheet, pillows—are on the floor. He’s hard already.

  “Animal,” I say.

  He pumps his cock. “Your fucking fault.”

  I yank my shirt off over my head and feel my hair sweep along my shoulders. I really like it. A lot. I may never go back to blonde, or Rapunzel-length. I like the dark side. I like it a little harsh.

  “See, why don’t I believe you? Why do I think you were always just like this?” I ask, looking him up and down. His abs are like bricks, and with his waist bent, sitting up, his skin ripples up over the top of them.

  “You think I’m some kind of playboy, don’t you?”

  I give him if the shoe fits hands.

  “Women are baggage,” he says, grabbing my hand and dragging me closer. I don’t resist. We’re way past that.

  “Are we?” I undo my bra and pinch my nipple. “Baggage? Trouble?” He grits his teeth, thumps his head against the headboard. I pinch the other nipple and watch him get harder. His cock has this gorgeous curve, and his balls rest big and strong on his thighs.

  I undo my jeans and slide out of them. It’s a shimmy, and I try to make it sexy. Judging by the way he’s responding, it’s a success.

  I slide my tongue up his stomach. I don’t touch his cock. I love this. He thinks he’s so powerful, but really, I’m the one in charge.

  He seizes my body in his hands and flips me over. I land with a squeal on the mattress. Then he drags me towards him, sitting against him, spooning, and says, “So, Peaches. Talk to me about porn.”

  Porn. I’d rather read about it than see it. “I don’t really watch it.”

  “No?” His stubble touches my cheek, but then his tongue sweeps softly through the inner curve of my ear. I moan and relax into his body.

  “Nun-huh,” I say. I’m gripping his thighs. His other hand moves down between my legs.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  “I don’t…” His fingers move inside me, his index finger hooking deep inside. His palm flattens my clit. A second finger makes its way inside. “…Shit.”

  He turns on the television, and there’s a tight-angle shot of a cock inside a vagina. It’s wet and surprisingly hot. My pussy responds with a clench and shiver.

  The camera pans up. The guy is sucking hard on her nipples. Vince’s fingers travel to my nipple in return. I find myself watching the woman more than the man. She groans, then I groan. She squirms, and I squirm.

  “You like her?” he asks. “You seem to like her.”

  Yeah. I like her. I’m suddenly so very, very wet. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Look at what he’s doing to her,” he says.

  Again, he pinches my nipple. I feel his cock hard against my ass.

  I watch the guy press inside her. He’s this sort of construction worker-type guy. Still wearing boots. A little bit annoying.

  She starts moaning, this fake orgasm moan. Vince rubs my clit, and I say, “She’s faking.”

  He laughs a little, and runs his first finger along my opening. “But you’re not.”

  I shake my head against his chin. He dips inside me for more of my wetness, which he then brings up to my clit.

  The hand that was pinching my nipple moves down to my waist. I place my hand where it was and keep pinching.

  He grabs the remote, sees what I’m up to, and whispers, “Such a fucking good girl.”

  He changes the channel again and again. It’s all porn. A girl in a teddy, flirting with a cable guy. A girl by a pool, going back and forth giving blowjobs to two different guys. None of it does it for me. Until he lands on a channel with a girl in a harness, tied up on a balance beam.

  “Whoa,” I say. The ropes are knotted all over her. Her wrists are bound together in front of her, around the beam. Her ankles are tied to the metal legs below.

  I feel Vince exhale, like a little laugh. “You just got so much wetter.”
/>   She’s got a ball gag in her mouth, and she’s writhing. A guy with tattoos, wearing jeans and black rubber gloves, tightens the ropes. His face is out of the frame. Her hair is sweaty, and I see the rippling red lines where the rope has made depressions into her skin.

  Without turning away, I ask, “Is this okay?” I sound so breathy, even to myself. The guy pours lube on a dildo and drags it down her roped torso.

  “More than okay, beautiful. I want what you want. You should know that by now.”

  Now a woman enters the frame. Heels, a leather corset, her thin body also tattooed. Long black hair and short red nails. “Are you gonna listen this time?” she says, in this sweet dark way. And the girl tied to the beam nods. “Yeah? You’re gonna listen, you’re going to come when you're told?”

  It’s like the words drizzle right through my body.

  “Fuck,” Vince says. “I can’t believe that you’re wet like this all the time.”

  I’m mesmerized by what I’m seeing, and it’s not until he hoists me up and positions himself inside me that I come back to earth a little. Slowly, he lowers me backward onto his cock. The television becomes much, much less interesting.

  He enters me fully. It’s a different angle than we’ve done before, from behind and below, and I feel my opening stretch to take him. It’s just the good side of painful.

  He lets out a long, slow hiss as he pushes inside. At the same time, I moan his name, telling him how I want him. God, how I want him.

  “You fucking have me, princess,” he says into my ear.

  I take his hand and place it on my abdomen, putting my palm over his. “Feel it?” My muscles press out as he drives in.

  “God, yeah.”

  Now he slides out, using one hand on my ass for leverage and I feel him tighten his grip on my abs. He slides in again.

  He stays inside me, no longer fucking me. I clench down on him and feel my G-spot respond. No sex toy will ever, ever compete with this.

  He puts his fingers in my mouth, and I suck on them hard, getting them wet and warm. His skin is salty and rough, but now so familiar. So much a part of me and us together. He puts his now-wet fingers back on my clit. He’s not quite on the mark, not at first, but then he finds it. I dig my feet into the mattress and press back against him, taking him deeper.

  The girl on the beam starts coming. Her legs tremble violently, and her toes tense up so tight that she’s on her tiptoes almost. She fights her restraints so hard, her skin whitens under the ropes and strips of leather. The noise of her coming, even around the ball gag, is so hot to me.

  “That’s real,” I say.

  “I know. You sound way fucking better than she does,” Vince says. He parts his fingers, exposing my clit to the air. “Let me feel you.”

  I wet my fingers in my mouth and start touching myself. The sensation of his fingers on either side of mine, opening me up for me to touch…

  The girl on the TV is in the throes of ecstasy, writhing and begging and panting around her gag. “Let me hear you scream,” he says. His thumb comes up to my jaw, where I love it. He covers my mouth with his hand, aggressive and possessive. “Oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit,” I murmur into his palm.

  “Scream,” he says. “Loud. Let me hear you.”

  And I do. The harder I scream, the harder he fucks me. But before I tip over the edge, he pulls my hand away from my clit.

  I’m whimpering, “No, no, no, I was so close.”

  “Do it,” he says. “Let my cock make you come.”

  “Inside?” I gasp.

  “Infuckingside.”

  “I can’t.” “Shut.” He thrusts. “The fuck.” Another thrust. “Up.” God. Oh my God.

  I think it’s happening. His movement inside me is driving me. I grip his hands in mine but he won’t give me any mercy. I have no choice. I can’t whine my way out of this, I can’t beg my fingers back to my clit. He gets his way. I want him to get his way. I close my eyes. I imagine his dick inside me, on the back of my clit.

  “Come for me, princess. Right now.”

  It started way before he can possibly imagine. But now whoosh goes the world. “I am, oh God, I am…”

  He doubles down, fucking me harder. The bed squeaks, he grunts into my ear.

  The color of the orgasm starts to fill my vision, from below this time rather than from above like normal. It’s thick and rich and dark blue, almost. It’s a haze that I can’t see through, and that starts not outside me but inside me.

  Every drive hits a place I didn’t even believe existed, and I start crying out, screaming his name. I feel like I’m detaching from myself almost. His hand tightens over my mouth.

  “There you go,” he’s whispering, “I feel you.”

  I’m tumbling down it, coming inside, actually coming inside, with my clit pulsing all by itself, and into his palm, I roar, “I fucking love you so much.”

  Even as I’m saying it, I can’t believe I said it. I’m that far out of my mind. But I meant it. I mean it.

  He shifts my ear to his lips. “Do you mean that?”

  I nod into his hand and he pinches my jaw a little tighter.

  He drives me up onto my knees, then down on all fours. He rams into me so hard my eyes begin to water as I clutch the bed. The girl on the screen has a dildo inside her and a vibrator on her clit, and she’s screaming muffled Yesses around her gag. Her thighs quiver and tears stream down her cheeks.

  He comes inside me. He comes deep and hard and fills me up. I know because I can already smell him. That girl on the screen, she might think she’s in heaven, but she’s not. Because I’m there already.

  Except for one thing. I wait, and I listen.

  But he doesn’t tell me he loves me. Not yet.

  29

  We pick up the passports the next morning as soon as the Tailor opens up for business. He hands each of us a manila envelope. I don’t open mine, but Lucy, she’s like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Oh my God,” she squeaks happily. “This is amazing!”

  The Tailor grins and nods. But he’s also gritting his teeth in the universal signal of Put that evidence away, miss.

  She holds up not just the passport, but also a driver’s license. There she is, Lucy now named Elena Colburn, cute as ever. And just as naïve as ever. I put the license back in the envelope and jam it back into her purse. She’s busy marveling over the pages on her passport, saying, “Oh my God, you even got the hologram!”

  They cost us fifteen hundred each, and Lucy, like a good and proper capitalist, starts counting out the second half of the payment right there in full view. The Tailor puts one hand to his mouth.

  “Lucy!” I snap and palm the cash in my hand.

  The noise of the laser eye doorbell dings behind us, and I stuff my hand into her bag and turn around. Lo and fucking behold, it’s an old lady with a fur in her hands. Over the edge of her squirrel coat or whatever it is, she’s eyeing me like I’m a rapist. Whatever. She’s been spending her whole life looking after her furs. I don’t totally blame her. While I don’t have FELON tattooed on my fingers, I’m not that far off.

  The Tailor writes her up a receipt on a carbon copy pad, and the old lady clutches her purse as she passes me. I’m pretty sure she mutters, “What would your mother say about those tattoos?” but I’m not 100%. Incidentally, my mother would say, “Well done,” because she was awesome and she lived to see them. So there.

  When the doorbell dings on the old lady’s way out, I take Lucy’s purse on my shoulder and discreetly count out the cash not in full view.

  “Oh, sorry!” Lucy whispers. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  The Tailor hands me a newspaper, and I slide the money inside.

  “Pleasure,” he says and shuffles off into the fur and plastic.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Lucy says as the Tailor disappears.

  “God almighty, Elena,” I say, digging the truck key from my pocket and guiding her towa
rds the door. “Hold your horses.”

  She doesn’t though, and rips open my envelope before I can. She keeps the passport hidden in the envelope as she flips it open. Her eyes go from me to the passport and back again. “Hello, Marco Vargas!” she whispers. “Hotcha!”

  Then she licks her finger, presses it to my bicep, and snatches it away, hissing, “Sssssssss!” Like I’m on fire.

  She stuffs the envelopes into her purse, and we step outside, walking so close that the electric eye beeps only once.

  But she doesn’t go straight to the truck. Instead, she crosses the street to the Buffalo Exchange, turning over her shoulder to say, “Elena needs some clothes. And so do you, Marco.”

  The drive to El Paso takes five hours, during which we burn through both of my dad’s old cassette tapes of Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison and Live at San Quentin. Twice.

  Now, I thought I loved her last night, but now I know it’s real, because every single time we hear “A Boy Named Sue,” Lucy sings along at the top of her goddamned lungs.

  Which gets me this fucking close to asking her to marry me.

  On the outskirts of town, we pull into yet another tragic motor lodge. This one called the AmericInn.

  “It’s just getting progressively worse, isn’t it?” Lucy says, gaping at the sign. “Drive Inn was funny, but this is just beyond the pale.”

  “Let’s just all thank God it’s not The MexicInn or some shit like that.”

  “Amen,” she says and adjusts the bobby pin in her hair.

  I park next to an open dumpster with a row of the world’s largest crows on the edge. They’re about the size of toddlers, and one of them is pecking at the remnants of what looks like a chocolate cupcake. Might be a bran muffin. I don’t look too close. I’ve spent long enough around native guys to know that if you’re smart, you don’t fuck around with crows.

  Lucy hustles around the side of the pickup with her luggage and grabs my hand. “Calling Hitchcock.”

  It gets worse. Inside, the place features heavily on faded Fourth of July decorations and has that weird institutional smell of ammonia cleaner, which makes everything smell like urine. There’s an enormous German shepherd in the corner, with a spiked collar, missing one eye, growling as we come inside.